December update and music

After a little blogger break, I'm back and on a new computer. Our home computer crashed on New Year's Day (great way to start a new year), forcing me to take a little break. After attempting to recover some info, it became clear that we needed a new computer. I still don't know what I am going to do about my lost itunes however. It make take a while to reload 6,000 songs I had on it.
Not knowing what to ask Santa for this year, I ordered the remaining Over the Rhine albums I didn't have off the band's web site. It goes without saying, that I've been listening to a lot of Over the Rhine lately.
Over the Rhine Changes Come A live album taken from their Ohio tour a few years ago, this CD captures a brilliant concert performance. Most of the songs highlight their album Ohio. Over the Rhine is a great live band. They seem comfortable and laid back yet a very intimate performance. This is a great disc to experience Over the Rhine live.
Over the Rhine Live From Nowhere Vol 2 The second disc in a yearly tradition of Over the Rhine releasing highlights from their performances from over the past year. Live from Nowhere has got some great songs and covers not available on any other album. I liked the Changes Come disc a little better. I like my live albums to come from a single or couple of performances. Live From Nowhere jumps around a lot from performance to performance. This gives the listener a little less continuity than a single performance (in my opinion).

Beck Sea Changes It might surprise some that I like Beck since I've never mentioned him before and he has been around for a while. I got his latest album The Information last year and liked it. I found it innovative with lots of musical styles that seemed to blend together pretty well. I picked up Sea Changes based on the singles "Lost Cause" and "the Golden Age". This is Beck's break up album (he supposedly made this album right after a rough break up). Most of the songs are pretty sober compared to what else he has done and don't have the mix of urban and hip hop beats. In their is no rapping at all. Beck just sings in a stripped down fashion with some pretty moving results.
Ryan Adams Easy Tiger Here is another artist I generally haven't paid much attention to. I got this one based on the single "Two" which has been getting some air play. I thought the song was absolutely beautiful. It was one of those "I need to buy that album to get that one song." Luckily the rest of the album is worth keeping. Ryan sings short-sweet "alternative country songs". He's about as "country" as I like.
Over the Rhine Eve Over the Rhine's third album and pretty hard to find. Eve captures the band still growing and changing right before they made their masterpiece "Good Dog, Bad Dog." Probably my favorite out of their early albums.
Over the Rhine The Darkest Night Of the Year I opened this X-mas present a little early this year since I lack seasonal Christmas music. I thought this would be a good disc to crank up for driving around looking at Christmas lights. I found this to be a very dark sounding Christmas CD (which is what it was intended to be), but over all, it lacks the Christmas feel and joy that much of their latest Christmas CD-Snow Angels has.
Over the Rhine Amateur Shortwave Radio One of Over the Rhine's "fan only" albums, this is a collection to celebrate Over the Rhine's birthday. The album opens with a beautiful rendition of one of Over the Rhine's first great songs "Like a Radio" and then goes into a effective version of the Stones's "Ruby Tuesday".

Over the Rhine Cutting Room Floor (not pictured) Yet another "fan only" album of songs and demos not found anywhere else. You can't complain about a band that truly is appreciative towards their fans and releases albums geared especially for them. These "fan only" albums are not to make new fans, but reward the old ones. That's a nice change every so often. Cutting Room Floor is a great example of this. The closing tune "Helpless" (a Neil Young cover) is pretty effectively delivered when Karen puts in the context of post 9-11, when it was performed.